Come Alive Ch. 09

"Of course," the rep said. "Shall we paint a new ship's name and port on the stern?"

"Yes, please. Time Bandits, plural, out of Bergen, Norway."

"I'll see to it personally, sir."

+++++

They made it back to Time Bandit in time for a late lunch, then they transited the Trollhätten locks -- as in more than one. These were once again huge commercial affairs, sized to accommodate smaller ocean-going freighters and, once again, they transited with other large ships. After the second lock, they motored through the city center, waiting for two bridges to be raised before they stopped for the night at a purpose-built lagoon off the Spiköstigen. It was early enough that Dina wanted to get Henry to the local hospital's lab for a round of bloodwork, so a taxi was called, and off they went.

"Nice having my own personal doc, ya know?"

"Don't let it go to your head," she said as she filled out the paperwork the oncologist in Gothenburg had provided. "Now go! Your vampires await!"

"Did I mention I hate needles?"

"Only ten times. On the taxi ride here."

"Oh. Well...I hate needles."

"Go!"

He went to the lab then ambled back to her. "They got it on the first try this time."

"Lucky you. They will call me with the results this evening, so let's go."

"Yeah, hospitals give you the willies too, huh?"

"The what?"

"The willies. You know, like a shiver that runs up your spine when you watch a horror flick?"

"You watch horror films?"

"No."

"You confuse me too much, Henry Taggart."

"Excellent!"

"How would you like a nice proctologist's exam?"

"I don't know. Hum a few bars and maybe I'll recognize it."

"You are going to drive me mad!"

"And the crowd goes wild!"

+++++

And so it went. A seemingly endless idyll motoring across Sweden by river -- interspersed with two long days sailing across lakes Vänern and Vättern, huge lakes in Sweden's interior. More villages, bakeries and ice cream shops, summer crowds -- with many curious onlookers gathered along the edges of the various locks watching the action.

Astrid began to emotionally separate from Rolf the closer Bandit got to Stockholm, intuitively knowing their journey of the heart was coming to an end. Rolf did his best to show a stiff upper lip, but he too began to withdraw. Sensing that something was wrong, Clyde stayed with them the night before she was scheduled to fly back to Oslo. Taggart sent the two of them by taxi to the airport, and when Rolf returned a few hours later he clambered back onboard and disappeared into his cabin. Taggart decided to let him be. Clyde didn't.

He spent a day at yet another hospital and yet another oncologist 'gave him the bad news' -- and Taggart began to suspect that some physicians actually got into the role of telling some people they were going to die, rather like medieval priests relished their role as gatekeepers to the afterlife. Maybe it was a power dynamic, he thought, though he dared not bring up the subject with Dina.

After transiting almost sixty locks many of Bandits lines and fenders were worn out, so Taggart took Rolf shopping at a marine supply store; afterward, they spend the rest of one day organizing the new goodies while discarding the old. Bandit spent another day getting her engine serviced, and the three of them played the tourist game and wandered around Stockholm that day. After that, all that remained was a daunting 400 mile run down the Baltic Sea to Copenhagen, then a sedate passage through the Kattegat -- passing Gothenburg on the way to Ellös, where the new boat waited. Of course, a stop in Copenhagen was mandatory -- at least according to Dina it was -- because 'the best oncologists in the world' could be found there.

Stockholm was, Taggart soon discovered, called the Venice of the north with good reason. Almost every neighborhood in the city was located on an island, and there were marinas everywhere you looked.

"Everyone in this city must own a goddam boat!" he growled as they waited for yet another bridge to open -- with 20 other boats. "It's like Los Angeles at rush hour...only on the water!" It took a day and a half just to wind their way through the maze to the open sea, but by then he'd decided the rocky coast was the most enticing sailing grounds he'd ever seen. "You could sail here your entire life and never see the same island twice!" The charts for the area were a condensed blur of astonishing detail, as even what appeared to be large rocks had anchorages listed.

Still, while open water beckoned they ran into the same intemperate weather they had experienced in Gothenburg: a huge high-pressure system had parked itself over Northern Europe and the region was baking under temperatures reaching the high 90sF. Sailors had to deal with winds most charitably called 'light and variable' -- which meant breezes so light and capricious that sailing became pointless. Which meant the engine was doomed to power most of Bandit's trip to Copenhagen. The air conditioner would work overtime, and when they'd first gotten underway in Stockholm, Dina had ordained that no one spend more than an hour at the wheel while temps remained so extreme.

Taggart detested running the engine -- Bandit was a sailboat, after all -- but making two knots over the bottom was simply not feasible now. He found that now he was constantly modifying his itinerary to squeeze in new routes that would take them by 'something they just had to see' -- at least according to this or that guidebook, or according to fellow sailors they met at locks or when berthed at marinas. But August was looming now, which left two -- or possibly three months to get to Paris, given his oncologists' prevailing timeline, anyway.

But, he reasoned, the bad weather couldn't last all summer, could it? Whatever, the new boat would be fast, potentially much faster than Time Bandit. With those factors working in his favor, the plan was to pick up Time Bandits and leave Ellös -- only heading back towards Copenhagen. Then they'd cut south, making for the eastern entrance to the Kiel Canal, a shortcut that could save a potentially punishing crossing of the North Sea in an untested boat. The plan from there was, so far at least, unchanged. Duck into the Dutch canal system and head south to Belgium and France. Somewhere along the French coast he'd unship the mast and proceed down the Seine to Paris, put his feet up and bask in the glow of a handful of memories until...yeah, well...until Shit Happened.

So...leaving the Stockholm Archipelago in their wake, and as the Bandit found the open sea again, Taggart turned to the south and set the autopilot. With that out of the way, Clyde jumped into Henry's lap and assumed the position, and the pup was soon snoring away. Dina was down in the galley preparing some sort of soup and Rolf was sitting on the bow, lost in wonder, no doubt pondering the meaning of existence without his one true love sitting there by his side...

...when he heard a thunderous roar...just after a concussive blast knocked him to the cockpit floor...

© 2020 adrian leverkühn | abw | this is a work of fiction, pure and simple; the next chapter will drop in a week or so.